December 19, 2018

Border Wall Update

“President Donald Trump appeared Tuesday to back off his demand for $5 billion to build a border wall, signaling for the first time that he might be open to a deal that would avoid a partial government shutdown.” According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, “the president would consider other options and the administration was looking at ways to find the money elsewhere.”AP News

From the Left

The left thinks the wall is an unnecessary government expenditure, and that a shutdown would be a losing issue for Republicans.

From the Right

The right supports the border wall, but is divided about the efficacy of a shutdown.

“It is hard to justify spending another $5 billion on Trump's vision, at a time when the budget deficit is soaring and other critical needs make a more compelling case for tax dollars. Despite a boomlet of refugees from Central America, illegal immigration is down significantly from its peak more than a decade ago. The other problem is that, of all of the ways to spend more money on immigration enforcement, wall building will arguably yield the smallest bang for the buck.”USA Today

“Frustrated that neither Mexico nor Congress will pay for his border wall, President Donald Trump has directed his Cabinet to scrounge through the executive branch couch cushions to see what they can come up with… It’s unclear how much money that could produce, and whether Trump could legally order it transferred between agencies without permission from Congress.”Huffington Post

“Before Mr. Trump took office, Republicans were more trusted than Democrats on immigration, but nowit’s Democrats who are more trusted… in the [2018] Election Eve poll, 57 percent of white voters in swing districts said Mr. Trump’s words and deeds made them angry. The net gain that Republicans thought they could count on from whites disappeared, with 50 percent now agreeing that Mr. Trump and the Republicans were using toxic rhetoric to divide Americans…

“The new showdown over the $5 billion border wall is likely to further alienate Mr. Trump from a majority of Americans.”New York Times

From the Right

The right supports the border wall, but is divided about the efficacy of a shutdown.

According to the president of the National Border Patrol Council, “construction of a border wall [is] ahumanitarian measure to dissuade migrants from undertaking dangerous journeys to enter the United States… 80 percent of illegal immigrant women and girls are raped during their travel… a border wall would discourage human smuggling and trafficking operations run by Mexican criminal cartels.”Breitbart

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) writes, “In 2000, the Department of Homeland Security built a wall in the Tucson, Arizona, sector. Over 15 years, border apprehensions from CBP dropped by 90 percent. In 2005, DHS built a wall in Yuma, Arizona. There, border apprehensions dropped 95 percent over nine years, according to CBP data…

“Nancy Pelosi calls the wall ‘immoral,’ even though walls already exist at various points along the border. Democrats, including Hillary Clinton when she was in the Senate, supported walls and backed expansion as part of a large immigration package… The only time Democrats seem concerned about excessive government expenditure is when national security is implicated.”Daily Wire

“Support for President Trump’s border wall hit a record high… [It] just 33 percent in Quinnipiac’s polling in early 2017, as Mr. Trump took the reins of government after a long campaign of promising a border barrier. It reached 40 percent in April, as an earlier migrant caravan stormed the U.S., then dipped over the summer. But with new caravans sitting on the border again testing the U.S. boundary, support for the wall rose to 43 percent in the latest survey.”Washington Times

Others, however, ask, “short of [a shutdown], what exactly will change in the next two years? A Democratic House will not approve wall funding, or any other of Trump’s priorities... If Trump wants the wall, it’s shutdown or bust.”Conservative Review